Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners pioneer hpm 100 vs m80

I still have my hpm 100s powered by kenwood kr4070 receiver, 40wpc, from 1978.
I've listened to all the speakers BB has had over the past 2 years and nothing screamed buy me.
I did buy a Klipsch kg series HT set up some years ago, but can't compare with my Hpm100 for music.
I keep reading the reviews of the m80 and wonder if these could be the answer.
Has anyone compared the hpm100 with the m80?
I can't help but think there is a reasonably priced speaker that can compare to my 30+yr old set.
Perhaps not hearing the others side by side with mine is leaving me in the dark. Or perhaps my 30+ yr units still sound that good? Help!

Welcome fish!

The only thing you can really do is take advantage of Axioms 30 day trial and compare them side by side. You could always see if a fellow axiomite close to you would have you over for an audition as well.

The only issue with that is you would be listening to "their setup" "their room". A true comparison would be to have the M80's side by side to "your" HPM 100's and "your system".

I too waited 20 years before I upgraded my vintage Boston Acoustics A100 bass reflex speakers to the M80's. I will tell you it was a HUGE difference for me. I'm totally content with the M80's for sure. Over a year later, the M80's still surprise me.

Your pioneer HPM 100's are for sure very nice speakers, they don't make them like that anymore and actually you may be in for a tough time adjusting to "any" modern day speaker. Only you can be the judge, but for me, I can't believe I waited so long to upgrade.

Fair warning thou...once you get the M80's, be prepared to go into a spending spree for the rest of Axiom's speaker lineup...

Dana

I'm thinking ol' Wid had a pair of the HPM speakers? He'll chime in here momentarily.

I had the vintage Pioneers (mid to late 1970's) with the lights across the mids, and 15" woofers ... great speakers (CR series maybe?) but no comparison to the Axioms I now own.

It's the damn Pioneer SX-1050 receiver I sold in a garage sell for almost nothing several years ago that I'm kicking myself in the ass nowadays.

I saw an entire vintage Pioneer system at the local Habitat for Humanity here, going for $200 complete. What do these hpm speakers look like? the system I saw had some pretty big woofers with the mids off to one side, cabinet was quite wide(a-la '70's) maybe 16-18" wide by about 3ft tall, not all that deep. Didn't see what the receiver was.

I do not want to insult your speakers but I think design has progressed. I think you will be amazed at the Axioms. I have never heard your speakers but I think speakers of that era you are listening to the box. Axioms you will be listening to the music.

Yezzuh, Mr. Lampshade, audio things sure have progressed ... but, a state of the art late 70s system can be hard to top.

For example, Kenwood KA9100 amplifier driving a pair of Dahlquist DQM905s bettered a pair of M50s in the same system.

The HPM 100s were,are, a very nice 70s vintage speakers. I had the HPM 150 (1500) back in the mid to late 70s. Now it's hard to say whether they could match the Axiom M80s, I doubt it though, but in the day they were some very competitive speakers. Some of the better Japanese speakers of the day.

Back about 15-20 years ago or more there was what seemed like a significant design change in speakers. especially floor standers, in which they went from the large woofers and wide cabinets to what we see today in speakers that have cabinets that are relatively tall, narrow and deep,and not much wider than the drivers themselves. Apparently, it was determined through measurements that a significant amount of "diffraction" was occurring and sound was being lost along the width of these wider boxes, especially with sound from the tweeter, thus, considerable inaccuracy in what the listener was hearing.

Comparatively speaking, in most of today's models, you don't see drivers much bigger than 6 and a half inches, yet they still get as much or more bass than these older designs with the giant woofers. It seems more scientific fine tuning has been done between the cabinets and drivers to get the superior efficiency in sound. Ian could certainly give a much better description than me of design philosophy and the changes that have occurred over the years.

Probably not the best example, but I have an old set of speakers from Radio Shack with 12 inch woofers and giant cabinets, yet, in all sound categories, they don't even come close to my M80s.

I believe the reasoning behind multiple smaller drivers over one large driver is due to efficiency. The smaller drivers are easier to control and move than one large driver; this is why subwoofers have 500W or more for that one 12" or larger cone. Multiple smaller drivers work the same as one driver, in that you can add their sizes together and they achieve the same surface area of that one large driver thus achieving the same low frequency playback.

Thanks for the input.
I've been having trouble getting on and staying on this site for the past few days.
The more I think about it, the more I lean towards trying these.

What do you think of using my Kr4070 40wpc to drive the m80s?
Not sure 4-8 ohm?

thanks
John

Hi fish,

And welcome. Old stereo receivers were fairly robust, and since they were only two channels, there usually weren't cooling problems driving a 4-ohm load (more current into a lower impedance equals greater heat from the output transistors) so I expect your Kenwood would certainly drive the M80s to ample sound levels. However, 40 watts isn't much potential power for dynamic peaks on the M80s, which can handle hundreds of watts (tested in excess of 700 clean watts per channel without damage), so you'd have to be careful not to drive the Kenwood into clipping distortion that could potentially burn out the M80 drivers.

By the way, you'll notice a HUGE difference in accuracy and sound quality from the old HPM Pioneers. While those still sound good to you, you've accommodated the sound quality of the Pioneers as your reference, warts and all. Most of those old Japanese-branded speakers were very non-linear and colored, with really wonky frequency response curves when they were measured in an anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council back in the old days. At that time, they were no match in double-blind tests with early models from Axiom, PSB, Energy and Paradigm. I can think of only two exceptions in my years as an editor of audio-video magazines.

I think you'll be thrilled with the neutral wide-range sound quality of the M80s compared to the old HPM Pioneers.

Regards,
Alan

*bump*

Hey fishfool, any news?

More importantly ( ), what does your screen name mean? Are you a fisherman?

I do like to fish and I thought this would be a screen name available that I wouldn't forget.
I have listened to several different brands recently. Maggies, theil, paradigm, martin logan, b&w. Not sure of all the models.

I liked or disliked diffferent thing about each of them
I liked the paradigm 100 ($2800) the best so far. I'll have to go for another listen.
Although the Martin Logans ($5000) mids and highs were very natural sounding.
After listening to other speakers I came home played same cd in my set up and can really hear a difference. My hpm's are too shrill? The mid range seems to be too high pitched. Piano, sax, all too high on the register.
Becomes annoying after awhile.

I did find a Adcom 555 amp, pre, tuner,cd. for cheap. So I now have this set up with my hpm's.
I also found midrange on my old records sounds better than cd. but miss some of the highs and bass.
Besides not knowing what to upgrade there's always the $ factor. 2 in college $4k /mo puts a pretty good dent in the funds, for something my wife thinks is a waste. As I don't listen as often as I would like I have to partially agree.

I have HPM 100's in one room and M60's in another. I go back in forth between the rooms and can never decide which I like better. The bass is definately lower with the HPM's but the sub in the room with M60's fills the gap plus more lows. As for mids and highs they are very similar.

The HPM's do not reach very low when I connect them to my Denon AVR 4308ci, when they are connected to the Sansui 8080 they have really good lows and I really haven't tried the M60's with the Sansui so maybe they would compete better with the lows of the HPM100's. I don't regret the purchase of either of the those speakers.

I don't understand how the mid range can be bothersome on HPM100's they have adjustments for mids and highs so they can be set to your liking, I like mine set neutral.

My daughter and I have been playing the same cd on the different set ups in the house and both agree the adcom hpm set up sounds best.
Now I'm going too start swapping equipment around to see if we can improve

Doesn't it suck when you realize that your spouse is right about this sort of thing? Know how you feel.

Butch, I'm not sure I an correctly explaining myself.
When I listened to the Logans the piano and sax sounded almost "live"? The piano sounded like a piano ( we have one in the house)
When I listen to the same at home the sax sounds like a alto sax not a tenor sax. The piano sounds higher pitched than the notes being played.Almost tinny?
I do play with the adjustments and it does help.
There is a huge difference when I play the same passage an a record vs cd.
so it may be the source.

The wife's always right!
this is why we're still happy after 25yrs. LOL

spent the afternoon swapping cd players and playing with buttons on preamp.
It seems there's a "contour " button which alters the sound.
in the new position thing sound much better, go figure.
I'll have to try to find an owners manual form this pre amp.
I sent pm to someone on list close by to audition m80.

I just remembered that when I had the HPM's connected to my Technics 65 watt per channel (1970's 2 chl) receiver they sounded great. When it died I tried a late (1980's 2 chl) 100 wpc receiver and they sounded like you described. I then purchased a Sansui 8080 (1970's 2 chl monster) 130 wpc, they sound great like the Technics. Recently, I tried connecting them to a Denon 4308ci 7 chl 130 wpc receiver and they sound tinny, as you described. I don't know why but these newer receivers don't seem to send the low frequencys to the mains like the older receivers did. I'm wondering if it has to do with them being designed to have a sub. I had the Denon set with no sub large fronts 2 channel direct and the sound still didn't rival the sound when connected to the Sansui.

i remember in the 80s when i bought my first integrated amp (some Sansui model) with 125 W/ch.
i used it with speakers of about 86dB sensitivity.

got rid of it within a year because it could not even reproduce a solo piano at live levels; but i remember that the low frequencies were good and the rest too.
i liked this amp a lot, but not the low power.

i then bought a Hafler 500 which i still use.

Butch, this might have to do with amp designs, some of the older amps did not have linear amp sections, like most do now. Also those older amps had huge power supplies, so feeding speakers power was easy, the new avr's etc, have good power but no where near what some of those old amps have.

Thanks for all the feedback. I just placed my order for the m80.

I found a vintage sansui g5700 75wpc about 2 mos ago $20. $10 for cleaner for tuner and knobs . swapped out my 40 wpc kenwood for this. so far so good.
With the m80's on the way I 'm debating what to do first.
1. hook them up to the sansui in the living room ( dinner music)
2.hook them up thru the speaker selector to the adcom 555 amp right next to my hpms and do a/b comparison.
Also picked up another 40+ used cds today. (gotta love princeton record exchange.)

Personally I'm interested in a comparison, hummm... I love comparisons.

My new m80s.. 1st using sansui g5700 75w. I hooked them up put on a cd for dinner music, I couldn't turn the volume past 2. The out put was so much more than my KLH 17.
Listened all week with the Sansui, nice smooth pronounced mids and highs. Good bass.
mostly low to modrate level listening, using a large variety of cds.
I did discover some of them to be poorly recorded, never noticed before.

Last night had my son carry them to the basement, my hernia repair prevented me.
Hooked them up to the adcom 555 amp placed them right next to my HPM 100s so all I had to do to judge was move over 1 cushion on the sofa.

We played the same song on each speaker one at a time. My son and I both agreed on the same differences. The M80s put the Hpms to shame as far as mids and highs, but the Hpms had more bass.
We then played the same songs on my old phillips turntable , wow what a difference, much "smoother" full range sound.
We both liked the m80s with the turntable the best.
I had him carry the Hpms upstairs. We played with the postioning of the m80s with the others out of the way. Spread them further apart moved closer to the rear wall. faced almost straight forward
We cranked it up a little and...There's the bass! Nothing missing here!

Glad you're enjoying them ff! I remember when I first got my M80s, I put on Physical Grafitti and immediately noticed the bass of the 80s, tight and punchy.

So the M80s are ALSO the Dick Cheney of speakers?

I said "tight and punchy" , not "white and paunchy" !